First Regional Patent Office to be Located in Detroit, Michigan.

We are pleased to report that Commerce Secretary Gary Locke and USPTO Director David Kappos have announced that the first Regional Patent Office would be located in Detroit, Michigan. Being a local patent practitioner, i.e., a Michigan attorney with offices a short drive south of Detroit, near Toledo, Ohio, we could not be more pleased with this announcement!

In a conference call this afternoon with reporters Commerce Secretary Gary Locke announced that the first Regional Patent Office would be located in Detroit, Michigan and will open at some point during 2011, employing some 100 patent examiners with some additional support staff. Locke explained that as a part of the nationwide workforce initiative of the Obama Administration high paying jobs would be coming to the USPTO Detroit Satellite Office. Locke said that while 100 patent examiners is an appropriate level of staffing initially that number could expand over time if the Regional Patent Office model proves successful. Secretary Locke also explained that the Detroit Satellite Patent Office will be “the first of several Patent Offices we hope to establish around the country.”

AT! had posted several weeks ago (here) that Regional Patent Offices were being seriously considered, and that Detroit was in the running for the first location. A recent post at the Inventive Step blog had confirmed that the idea was likely to come to fruition. We had also recognized the lobbying that had been done by a local intellectual property law association, the Toledo Intellectual Property Law Association (TIPLA), which had espoused regional Patent Offices as one of many proposed patent law reforms and sent many letters to government officials in this regard.

At the end of the day, this is an excellent opportunity for our region, and for other regions as they acquire their own Regional Patent Offices. Congratulations to the Kappos administration and all persons at the local and government levels who worked hard to bring this concept to reality! We at the Anticipate This!™ | Patent and Trademark Law Blog applaud your efforts and success!

JW Note: We were officially supposed to be on a blog-cation for the holiday season here at AT!, but this story was just too good to pass up! Hat tip to Gene Quinn at the IP Watchdog for breaking this story first!

While I understand at least some of the reasons for the choice of locale, I had hoped that the USPTO would open its first satellite patent law office in a location that I might actually want to visit or live — Southern California, for instance. However, hopefully the USPTO’s selection of Detroit will help improve that city’s economy, in addition to increasing efficiency at the USPTO and taking a bite out of its infamous backlog.